Denmark scrambled two F-16 fighter jets on Tuesday to identify a Russian bomber detected on radar near the Nato member’s airspace, the Danish air force said in a statement.
”A visual contact was made at 6.02am [local time” with the Tupolev-160 bomber, the statement said, adding that the Danish F-16s ”followed the bomber for about 25 minutes before it turned back toward Russia”.
The bomber took off from the Russian military base in Murmansk, then flew over the Norwegian coast and the North Sea before it was observed near the Danish coast, the air force said.
The air force said there had been two similar sightings recently, but provided no dates.
Russian President Vladimir Putin announced the resumption of long-range flights in international air space on August 17.
Such flights were standard during the Cold War stand-off with the United States and its Western European allies, but were abandoned in 1992 amid financial difficulties that followed the Soviet collapse.
Russia’s head of strategic aviation General Pavel Androsov has said the aircraft will not carry nuclear weapons and that the main aim of the flights was to improve training for pilots.
In recent months, Russian bombers have been detected flying over the North Atlantic in international airspace, near Norway and Britain.
In September, Oslo and London dispatched fighter jets to identify the planes. — AFP
